George Orwell

George Orwell was an English author and poet, and was very opinionated and pessimistic about the direction in which society was headed. He shows this pessimism and his passions about the government, politics and the living conditions of the lower classes in European cities in his writing. Outside of his novels and large works of nonfiction, he wrote many essays and poems attributing to his fight against totalitarianism and communism. He spent many years battled the rise of communism in the Spanish Civil War, where he fought and was injured fighting for the Republican side. http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/gorwell.htm His writing was very controversial and was not always well received during his lifetime, and as a result he barely scraped a living, working ocassionally as a dishwasher, general laborer and grammar school teacher.http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/gorwell.htm He died in 1950 at the age of 46, after a long term battle with tuberculosis. http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/orwell_george.shtml

The Orwell Prize was created in 1975, and is an award presented each year for the best book, article and blog (since 2009) that relates the most to Orwell's own political views. http://www.theorwellprize.co.uk/the-orwell-prize/about-the-prize/ Orwell did not receive any awards during his lifetime but his opinions are greatly appreciated in the present day. Orwell lived an adventurous life exploring and analyzing political aims, war efforts and government systems. Many of his books, including Animal Farm and 1984, are currently included in many high school and university curriculums. http://sites.google.com/a/susanpiercelavc.com/susan-pierce-english-103/home/fall-2010-syllabus

Orwell struggled to start his career as a writer, and worked many low paying jobs and lived in poverty throughout his 20s. He wrote his first published book, Down and Out in Paris and London in 1933, describing the life of the lower classes in each of the cities mentioned. http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/gorwell.htmOrwell was very interested in the lives of those stricken by poverty and eventually he found others who shared his interest. He was commissioned a few years later to write about unemployment in England, which resulted in his book, The Road to Wigan Pier. http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/gorwell.htm He then went on to write Homage to Catalonia while living and reporting in Spain during the Spanish Civil War.

Until the beginning of World War II Orwell was considered to be a journalist, writing mainly factual books and article compilations. Then, under the oppression of Hilter and Stalin, Orwell wrote Animal Farm, his first novel, written from the perspective of pigs, cows and chickens on a farm. Behind the everyday characters it is mainly a reference to the intricacies of revolution. http://www.sundaynews.co.zw/inside.aspx?sectid=7487&cat=3

Approaching the end of his life, losing the fight against tuberculosis, Orwell published his last book, 1984. It portrays Orwell's opinion that society was headed to complete totalitarianism. Shortly after the publication of this book, Orwell was hospitalized and he died a year later. http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/gorwell.htm

• "Men can only be happy when they do not assume that the object of life is happiness." http://www.great-quotes.com/quote/926865

• "It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence. In other words: it is war minus the shooting." http://www.orwell.ru/library/articles/spirit/english/e_spirit

• " Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act. " http://www.quotedb.com/quotes/1980

• "Freedom is the right to tell people what they do no want to hear." http://home.iprimus.com.au/korob/Orwell.html

• "The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it." http://www.orwell.ru/library/reviews/burnham/english/e_burnh

• Down and Out in Paris and London

• Burmese Days

• A Clergyman's Daughter

• Keep the Aspidistra Flying

• The Road to Wigan Pier

• Homage to Catalonia

• Coming Up for Air

• Animal Farm

• The English People

• Nineteen Eighty-Four